


all the ashes in my wake

by overtures



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (it's complicated), Action/Adventure, Bucky Barnes as Captain America, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Modern Bucky Barnes, but it's gonna take a while to get there :), character tags will be updated as they appear, yes there is plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-09 14:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19478104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overtures/pseuds/overtures
Summary: Steve Rogers is defrosted six weeks after the attack on New York. Imagine his surprise when, while catching up on the things he's missed, he watches a video of a figure in a red, white, and blue costume decapitating aliens with a familiar shield.As it turns out, in the wake of Steve’s apparent death, ‘Captain America’ has become a mantle passed on within SHIELD and the US Army. Everyone says that Steve will love the current Cap, but after Steve meets the man from the video, well, ‘love’ isn’t exactly how he’d describe his feelings towards the guy.Bucky doesn't like the fact that the original Captain America has returned. It's not that he's worried he'll be out of a job, but because there's trouble brewing inside of SHIELD, and he can't quite figure out exactly how and where the old Cap fits into the mess.But as ghosts from both of their histories re-emerge from the shadows, the Captain Americas of both past and present will have to work together in order to save what they hold dear: their friends, their freedom, and who knows, maybe even each other.





	all the ashes in my wake

**Author's Note:**

> title from arsonist's lullaby by hozier:  
> "But my peace has always depended/On all the ashes in my wake"

# 

**STEVE**

Steve hears the crunch of tires on the gravel driveway just as he begins flipping through the second binder from his stack, the navy one with a white label proclaiming it as ART. That must be Romanoff, he thinks. It’s an easy deduction to make; it’s not like anybody else would come this far out into the middle of nowhere just to see him. 

He continues to read the file. The SHIELD agents had offered some sort of touch-controlled screen computer-tablet thingy for him to keep all of his reading material, but he likes the way that the precariously tilting stack of binders gives him a visual reminder of just how much he has to catch up on. Plus, the first time he had tried to use one of those computer-tablet thingys, he accidentally pressed too hard while trying to open up an app and caused the screen to crack in a way that looked not unlike a spider-web. The technician had freaked out way more than Steve had, and the cuts on his thumb from the broken glass had disappeared in less than five minutes. 

He’s halfway through the segment devoted to Pop Art, a quarter of the way through the thick binder, when Romanoff knocks on the door. He sets the binder aside on the couch pillow - there’s no point in him trying to hide what he’s reading: what else would he be doing, here in the middle of nowhere, sequestered and all alone?

“Hi,” Romanoff smiles at him when he swings open the door. She’s wearing a searing aqua windbreaker that clashes brilliantly with her hair, currently split into two braids that end just before her collarbone. She holds up a plastic bag, displaying both the cardboard box inside the bag and her lime green acrylic nails. “I have donuts.”

Steve smiles. “Come on in,” he steps aside as Romanoff breezes through the doorway. “I can put some coffee on, or do you want tea instead?”

Romanoff sets the plastic bag down on the otherwise vacant kitchen table. “Tea would be great, actually, I’ve just been staying with Clint - Barton, Hawkeye, you’ve met, right? - and he drinks about ten cups of coffee a day, and, well, I’m getting a bit tired of the smell,” and then she tilts her head towards the sofa - the binder on the couch isn’t visible from her spot beside the kitchen table, but Steve supposes that the stack beside it isn’t exactly inconspicuous - and she asks, “How much have you caught up on?”

“I’ve just started on Andy Warhol,” Steve replies as he presses the button that starts the kettle.

Romanoff grins, this time seemingly more genuine. “His use of colour is a personal inspiration of mine,” she says, and then, in a tone that invites explanation, “I didn’t think you’d start with art history.”

“I was an artist,” Steve finds himself saying, even though he doesn’t need to explain himself, and certainly not to Romanoff. “I - before the war, I worked as an artist, commercially. I was interested, that’s all.”

Romanoff tilts her head to the side, considering. “Huh,” is all she says.

Steve takes out two cups and gets the milk from the fridge. Him and Romanoff both tend to take their tea without sugar, a fact they discovered when the only tea available was the generic no-brand type from the SHIELD cafeteria. “It was rationed during the war,” Steve had explained, even though he was sure she already knew that, “and before that, well, you know, the Depression.” Romanoff had agreed: “Me too, except, well, you know, Communism,” and they had both laughed, even if it was a little strained. 

The kettle beeps (as everything seems to now, beeps and whistles and dings and chimes), indicating that the water is boiled. Steve busies himself with pouring the steaming water over the teabags while he asks, “So what brings you to this neck of the woods?”

“Oh, I was in the area.” 

Steve snorts. No one is just ‘in the area’ of the Retreat; the isolation is, apparently, kind of the whole idea. “Passing through?”

“I have to go back to New York, Clint’s meeting me up there, apparently there’s still some press stuff to deal with after the Battle which is _not_ my area of expertise, but -”

“Hold on,” Steve interrupts, “‘Battle’?” He can practically hear the capitalization of the word.

He can feel Romanoff blinking at him. “You know, the Battle - wow, actually, I guess you don’t know.”

Steve smiles wanely at her. He’s gotten used to being on the receiving end of those incredulous stares. “Must be recent, if you’re still dealing with the fallout.” 

“Yeah,” Romanoff nods, “it was a couple of weeks ago. Hey, do me a favour, read binder seven next? It’s the maroon one,” and Steve can’t really be surprised that she knows the contents of his binders that well; she probably helped to put them together, categorizing the last seventy years into bite-sized, easy to swallow portions. He can be a little pissed off at the instruction, though - that binder is labeled CAPTAIN AMERICA, and quite frankly, he doesn’t care what historians have had to say about him in the decades since his ‘death’. 

“Yeah, okay,” he says instead of voicing his grievances, and sets Romanoff’s cup down on the table in front of her. She picks it up with a murmured thanks. 

“How are you doing, Rogers?” she asks as he sits down, shifting the conversation decidedly away from small talk. Her eyes are a piercing green; they’re only a couple of shades darker than her nails, Steve notices. 

He’s not an idiot. He knows Romanoff has probably been told to keep an eye on him; after all, there’s no other reason for her to be oh so conveniently passing through this side of nowhere. The Retreat isn’t even really on the route to New York, it’s exactly out-of-the-way enough to require a special detour in order to visit. Steve knows that for a fact. It was one of the first things he checked once he figured out how to use Google Maps on his rarely touched laptop. 

“I’ve been doing fine, relatively speaking,” he replies, keeping his voice neutral, and then in a half-assed attempt to catch Romanoff off guard, he says, “what makes you ask?”

Surprisingly, she smiles, and it’s probably the most sincere smile she’s given him today. It’s also probably the saddest. “Look, I’ve been where you are - not here, at the Retreat, although I _have_ also been here, under _very_ different circumstances - but I’ve had to leave a world behind too, you know,” and not for the first time, Steve finds himself wondering exactly what her story is. He knows that she defected from _something_ Russian: jokes about Communism aside, from what he’s heard the other SHIELD agents joking about (okay, it was mostly Barton doing the joking) only Russians share her affinity for brightly coloured athletic wear, and also vodka. 

“Yeah,” he says, “except it’s more like the world left _me_ behind, isn’t it,” and Romanoff must not have anything to say to that, because they eat their donuts and finish their tea in empty, if not companionable, silence. 

The donuts taste good, too, if not a bit too sweet and a bit like plastic. He eats three of them, and tries hard not to think about when sweetness like that was rationed. 

\---

It’s funny how when Steve had woken up to the sound of a memory playing on the worn-down radio, he didn’t feel any relief at being alive. He supposes that maybe he should’ve mentioned this to one of the psychologists when they asked him “ _and how_ are _you feeling today, Captain Rogers?_ ”. If he had, maybe Romanoff would be on suicide watch instead of donut-duty. Or maybe she wouldn’t be swinging by the Retreat at all.

Maybe they wouldn’t have allowed him to come to the Retreat in the first place. God, he could just imagine that happening in this brave new world, couldn’t he. Sitting in a room with four white walls and a plain table bolted into the ground--or even worse, furniture that was just a couple degrees off from what he remembered. Being asked every day why he isn’t getting better. Why he isn’t getting over the fact that everyone that he knew is dead, or as good as. 

Why sometimes, he wishes that they never found the Valkyrie. Why he wishes he was still in the ice. 

So it’s better like this, he thinks. Better that SHIELD doesn’t know there’s anything for him to recover from. Let them think it’s just something he has to get over, instead of something he’s always going to have to push through. 

\---

Steve’s days look like this:

He wakes up, forms hospital corners out of his bedsheets, and forces himself to turn to the digital clock on his nightstand instead of the analog one hanging beside the mirror. He doesn’t need to check the time, though: reveille is at 05:30, as it has been since the war. At least that hasn’t changed.

He goes for a run, each time venturing further and further into the woods surrounding the log cabin. If SHIELD were to ask, he’d say that he’s trying to push himself, get back into fighting shape, but they don’t. Apparently, they’re still trying to pretend that they’re not monitoring him out here.

He showers. The hot water leaves his skin feeling scrubbed at and raw, but he tried to shower with cold water once, back at SHIELD, back when he was still trying to pretend that he could live like he did in the past, and the cold had only made his throat clench and visions appear in his mind, visions of ice that’s coming at him faster and faster and he’s _gotta put her in the water -_

So he waits until he can see steam spilling out from behind the curtain before he gets in the shower. It’s fine. It only stings his skin a little.

He makes himself eat breakfast. Groceries get delivered to him by the truckload every week, and there’s _variety_ , like SHIELD thinks he’s going to care whether his yogurt has zero grams of trans fat or if his cereal has added cholesterol or not. Everything tastes a bit like chemicals, but there’s different _flavours_ , now, so he tries to be adventurous with his food choices and mask out that plastic taste with things like ‘Hint Of Lemon Lime’ and ‘Blue Raspberry’. He does, however, draw the line at adding vegetables like kale and carrots to his smoothies like Romanoff had suggested once back at SHIELD. That’s one way he will not conform to the 21st Century, thanks.

He reads the binders. He’s already finished one, the emerald one labeled MEDICINE, because he’d wanted to know if he would have had a better life if he’d been born in the current age. Apparently, smoking is bad for the lungs. Who would have thought. Steve thinks about all of the asthma cigarettes he’d spend his paychecks on with regret.

No one’s managed to perfectly recreate the super soldier serum. That secret had stayed buried with Erskine, at least. There have, according to a footnote, been a couple of attempts by the Soviets and Americans alike, but so far Steve hasn’t been able to find out just what the results of these attempts had been. He doesn’t know if that’s something he should look into after (if) he gets out of the Retreat, or if it would even be worth the hassle in the end. From what he’s seen so far with SHIELD, they like to keep their secrets close to their chest. Even when they’re not really theirs to begin with.

He thinks after he’s finished the ART binder he might read the MUSIC/CINEMA one next. He wonders what marvels Disney has managed to produce in the last seventy years. That binder is a thick one, and it should help him procrastinate from reading the maroon CAPTAIN AMERICA binder, and, perhaps even more importantly, the slim manila folder labeled HOWLING COMMANDOS.

Sometimes he tries to watch TV or movies, but everything is filled with references to other things and he feels as though even if he reads through all the binders he still won’t be caught up. That’s fine, he supposes. He’s had a lot of practice in catching up: racing to follow Schmidt onto the Valkyrie, chasing Hydra’s tails throughout Europe, running after Erskine’s shooter. He’s been catching up to things his whole life, really; he’s just never had the chance to catch his breath. And now… he does, and he isn’t sure how he feels about that. He’s never had so much time with so much _nothing_ to do. The feeling, or rather, _lack_ of feeling would be unfamiliar even if it wasn’t seventy years forward from the things he’s used to. 

He thinks that once he’s been deemed ‘recovered’ by the SHIELD therapists, he wants to work again. Throw himself back in and find that sense of purpose. If he doesn’t have anything left worth living for in this world, he might as well find something he can die for. 

He eats lunch, and dinner, and sometime in the evening he forces himself to go lie on his bed. Sometimes he even manages to sleep through the night, but he never, ever dreams.

\---

Andy Warhol segues into Jean-Michel Basquiat which segues into Keith Haring, and Steve finds himself braving the internet to research the AIDS crisis and then has to go on a five-mile run to quell his anger. Funny how SHIELD didn’t include Haring’s cause of death in their binder.

He wonders what else they’re intentionally not telling him. He wonders if he’ll ever even know.

\---

Romanoff returns a week later, supposedly on the return trip from New York. Steve has no idea where she’s returning _too_ \- it could be to D.C., where SHIELD is now operating out of, but it could also be to wherever Barton is, or Idaho, or hell, Malibu, and Steve wouldn't know any better. Malibu would, from what little Steve’s seen on the television, make sense; her neon athletic ( _athleisure_ , sorry) wear probably wouldn't even stand out there.

Today she's wearing a matching purple tracksuit with a fuschia stripe down the arms and legs. Her hair is in an angular, pin-straight bob, and Steve realizes, as he goes to open the door to let her in, that he hasn’t read the maroon CAPTAIN AMERICA binder yet as he'd been instructed. He can't find it in himself to feel guilty, though; researching the AIDS crisis had propelled him to look into the Civil Rights Movement, and then to read through binder six, the yellow one labeled ACTIVISM/RIGHTS, where they listed all of the “progress” the world has made in the last seventy years, but, strangely enough, not many of the issues that Basquiat or Haring had painted about. 

It did mention, however, that men could now marry other men in New York. That had almost been worse to find out than the asthma cigarettes. He tries not to be jealous of how people living today could learn from the mistakes of the past that he had to live with. After all, technically he’s living today too, isn’t he.

“Just passing through?” he asks when he opens the door.

Romanoff smirks. There’s a different plastic bag in her hand, but her nails are still a neon green. “I come bearing bagels this time,” she says, “and also an offer.”

\---

“Rogers,” Fury says when Steve walks into his office.

The drive to D.C. had been long, but he'd managed to do it mostly at night and entirely on the motorcycle, so he wasn't really that fussed about the whole ordeal. Natasha had told him to pack his stuff up and leave it on the porch of the cabin for SHIELD to pick up - after all, they were the ones who gave it all to him, so they could be the ones to move it to the new apartment. He wonders how the agent will react when he sees that all of his worldly possessions fit exactly into one duffle bag. 

“Sir,” Steve intones, then, “I hear you have an offer for me.”

Fury grins, somehow managing to come across as both sincere and insincere at the same time. He cuts right to the chase: “Quite frankly, Rogers, you're too valuable of an asset to not be out in the field, and if you are working, I’d much rather have it be with SHIELD.” 

“Trying to keep control of me, Sir?”

“More like trying to keep you from being controlled by others.” Fury tilts his head. “Despite what you might think, I try to give my agents some leeway with their work because I’m nice like that, and I’ve heard you tend to be easier to work with when you have a hand on the wheel.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. Fury isn’t wrong, per se, but Steve wonders where and who he got that (okay, rather accurate) tidbit of information from. “Well,” he says, “I've been waiting to get back in.”

“Didn't like the quiet life? Of course you didn’t. We'll have to see about the logistics, but once you get settled in D.C., you’ll start training with Strike Alpha. That’s Romanoff’s team. You should fit right in. And who knows, if you really want to get back into the big leagues, we can have you liaise with the Avengers. Stretch those world-saving muscles of yours.”

“Avengers?” Steve asks.

He's getting a little tired of these important-sounding capitalized words being thrown around when he has no idea what they actually mean. It's enough to give a guy a complex.

Fury looks at him for a moment in something that could be classified as bafflement, if Fury ever showed any emotion on his face, ever. It's not unlike how Romanoff stares at him whenever he says anything particularly out of touch. It's a familiar quasi-expression. “I thought that Romanoff told you to read the maroon binder,” he says in lieu of answering.

That stupid goddamned maroon binder. Steve sighs. ‘Do As Romanoff Says’ had been Lesson Number 2 at SHIELD, right after ‘Do Not, Under Any Circumstances, Ask Fury About His Eyepatch Ever’, and well, he hadn't done what Romanoff said. 

“I didn't... have time,” Steve tries, wincing at his own attempt at lying. 

“Ah, yes,” Fury replies, bone dry, “I’d forgotten how hectic and busy it can get at the Retreat.” 

Steve has to actively keep from scowling. 

“You know what, how ‘bout you just do me a favour, Rogers, and just Google the Avengers. I’m assuming you know how to use Google. You might find the information useful in your, ah, immediate future. Read that binder later, whenever your schedule is free.”

Steve ignores the jab. He figures that he deserves it. “Sir,” he says, nodding his head before turning around to leave. He has to force his hand to stay at his side and not to snap up into a salute.

As he walks down the hallway towards the elevators, he manages to overhear Fury talking to someone else on what sounds like the telephone. 

“... like him, he’s like you… well, he seemed like he wanted to punch me during our talk… yeah, yeah, I knew you’d relate to that.”

\---

He Googles the Avengers while he's still at the SHIELD compound, sitting at an unoccupied counter on one of the general floors. His laptop is still connected to the internet here, and he actually does know how to use Google, thanks, this time it only took him two tries to properly access the website and punch ‘avengers’ into the search bar. He didn't quite know what he had been expecting to find in the results, but, to put it lightly, an alien attack certainly had _not_ been it. 

He supposes this must've been the ‘Battle’ that Romanoff had been referring to during their conversation a week ago. From what he reads in the blurbs from the websites as he scrolls down the Google results, it happened not even two months ago, right in the heart of downtown Manhattan. Apparently aliens (actual real life aliens) had come down to attack the city through a _glowing portal in the sky_. Had Steve been found just a few weeks earlier, maybe he would have seen it for himself. 

After he manages to get over the initial shock of _aliens attacking New York, what the fuck, the future just keeps on surprising him_ , he clicks over to the first YouTube link, aptly titled ‘ _AVENGERS_ _Battle Of New York Iron Man Hulk Thor Fight (REAL!!!! NOT CLICKBAIT)_ ’. The footage is shaky, obviously recorded on someone's cell phone camera, but it's in surprisingly good quality, and Steve can make out the action relatively well. He does have to stop for a second to ponder at the stupidity of staying to _filming an actual alien attack_ instead of, oh, he doesn’t know, _getting the fuck out of there_ , but the video has over 29 million views, and he supposes that he's probably done something stupider in the past for much less attention. 

He watches as a giant green humanoid-thing works with a built blond hammer-wielding man to take down a large, flying _actual space whale_ , before the camera pans up to show a red and gold robot-man blasting a group of aliens. The aliens - _the actual aliens that attacked New York_ \- look really weird, like if a wombat, a human, and a lizard somehow combined, and wow, okay, maybe now he's kind of glad that he wasn't awake for this fight. 

The video ends with the flying robot-man shooting an alien that lands not five feet from the camera, and the next one begins to load immediately after. The title of this one gives Steve a pause - ‘ _Cap DESTROYS Aliens (battle of new york) #cap #BoNY_ ’ - but before he can process it, the video begins. It’s of similar quality to the first one, but it shows a different street in the city, one crawling with those same lizard-wombat-esque aliens as before. As soon as the camera focuses, there’s a quick blur of movement from the side of the screen, followed by a spurt of gunfire so loud that Steve needs to turn the volume of the video down. Four of the aliens fall in rapid succession, bullet holes neatly in the center of their head, right between the ‘eyes’, and then there’s a loud metallic _clang_ and a round disk comes whizzing into frame -

Hold on. Is that his _shield?_

Steve moves to pause the video so he can get a closer look, but before he manages to click the mouse, a figure quite literally flies into frame with a spinning kick that knocks one alien back so hard it takes two others down with it. The figure lands in a roll just in time to catch the shield on its rebound from hitting yet another alien, and as the person straightens up, Steve can see a familiar colour scheme on the person’s costume. It looks just like his old suit from the war, but modernized, and a whole lot darker. The blue on the top half is such a dark navy that it might as well be black, and the red and white stripes around the abdomen area are darker, too, closer to a burgundy and grey. One arm of his uniform - the left, from what he can figure - looks like it got a revamp, though. There’s a dull metal sheen there, sunlight glinting off of what looks to be some type of armour. But the cowl/helmet situation is still in place, concealing most of the guy’s face and all of his hair, but instead of the Commandos’ wings emblazoned on the side, there's a letter ‘A’ surrounded by a circle.

 _What the Hell,_ Steve thinks. _What the actual Goddamn Hell?_

The video goes on for thirty more seconds, in which the figure wearing Steve’s Literal Uniform, What The Fuck, manages to clear the whole street of aliens using a combination of shield-throwing, shooting, and improbably-acrobatic martial arts. Right before the video cuts out, the man (it’s probably a man, Steve thinks, given those _shoulders_ ) looks directly at the camera, smirks (and _okay,_ that is some jawline), and gives a jaunty two-fingered salute.

Steve blinks at the screen for a few seconds, then opens a new Google tab, types in ‘captain america’, and hits the search button. 

Alright. Maybe he should actually read through that maroon binder after all.

\---

After he's exhausted the first page of Google results, Steve gets back onto the motorcycle and heads to the apartment SHIELD has set up for him. The furniture is simple and sparse, but he doesn’t really care; most importantly, there's an internet connection for him to continue his ‘research’. Firstly, however, he opens the box that contains the rainbow stack of binders, pulls out the maroon one, and flips it open. It takes him less than an hour to flick through almost the whole thing.

The facts contained within it match up with what he found online. Apparently, Steve isn't Captain America, not anymore. At least, he's not the only one.

According to both the internet and the binder, after Steve ‘died’ and the war was won, once SHIELD had been founded one of the first acts of the agency was to declare that the Captain America mantle would not be buried with Steve. Instead, it was to be passed on within both SHIELD and the US Army, to agents or soldiers that, according to Wikipedia, go “above and beyond the line of duty to protect their fellows and country”. 

Which, okay, sure, that’s a great idea. Steve had always been of the school of thought that Captain America was more than just him. It was an idea, a beacon of hope to unite the people who needed it the most. And he hadn’t minded being basically reduced a symbol during the war. It was what he had to do. But it did begin to get a little frustrating when the men couldn’t seem to separate him from the shield, and now, he couldn’t help but feel like the shield was all that was left over of his legacy. 

All of the Howling Commandos had been given the honourable title of Captain America after the war, a fact which pleased Steve when he found it out, but Dum Dum had been the only one to actually “serve”, given that he’d lead the Howlies in Steve’s absence. But after he read that, Steve stopped browsing the Wikipedia page. He still wasn't ready to see what his friends had done in the last seventy years. He's sure they all did great things, but still can't bring himself to deal with that manila folder of emotions. He's just not _ready_. Not yet.

He's exhausted, he realizes. He's been exhausted ever since he woke up, but not the kind of exhaustion that would let him sleep easy and wake up ready to go. This kind, this emotional draining that he’s feeling right now, though, this is different. This is the kind of exhaustion that will get you to sleep easy as anything, but it’s the type of bone-tiredness that will also make sure you don't dream, and you'll wake up the next morning even more tired than before.

Steve thinks, as his eyes drift closed, that he completely forgot to research the current Cap. That's fine, he supposes. It won't hurt to wait until tomorrow to do that.

\---

“So, did you read the binder?” Romanoff asks before she takes a bite of her Caesar salad.

Steve had gone into SHIELD again today to let Fury know that yes, he was in, whatever the fuck ‘in’ actually entailed. Romanoff had cornered him on his way out of Fury’s office and bullied him into getting lunch with her, saying she would give him all the inside gossip on the team he would be spending so much of his waking hours with. He wonders how she knew he would say yes to Fury’s offer. He had sworn their talks were confidential until he began training, but, Steve supposes, that wouldn't mean much to Romanoff, would it.

He nods, chewing on his sandwich. He swallows. “Yeah, I managed to skim through most of it yesterday night.”

“And? What do you think?”

“Think about what?”

Romanoff rolls her eyes and stabs a piece of lettuce with her fork. “Barnes, what do you think about Barnes?”

“Barnes?” Steve repeats.

“The current Cap. Okay, did you _actually_ read the binder, or -” 

“I read… most of it. Um, I saw a video of him during the Battle, or I assume that was him, and he seems very…” He doesn't know how to finish the sentence. What _does_ he think about the guy who’s wearing Steve's uniform and using his shield so comfortably? Honestly, judging from the video alone, Steve thinks the guy is a little… show-off-ish. But he doesn't want to say that to Romanoff, so he keeps quiet.

“Very…” Romanoff prompts.

“Talented? I don't know.”

She huffs a small laugh. “Ooh, don't tell him that, you'd never get him to shut up.”

“What do you mean? When would I be talking to him?”

Romanoff levels him a Look. “Well, considering he's on Strike Alpha, the team you will be joining very soon, I sure hope you would talk to him, given that communication plays a pretty important part in having good teamwork.”

Steve scowls.

She sighs through a mouthful of salad. “Don't worry,” she says after swallowing, “you two will get along fine, I think. Maybe a bit too well. I mean, he's a complete asshole with a tragic past, and well, you've already got the tragic past part down, and I'm beginning to believe that you, too, can be an asshole. So who knows. You guys might be kindred spirits or whatever.”

Steve scowls harder. He misses the days when everyone around him was either too scared of him or too awed at him to be mean to him. But then again, Romanoff was never _nice_ to him. He suspects that's one of the reasons he's come to enjoy her company after all.

“Who else is on the team?” he asks, trying to steer the conversation onto something that might actually be useful in his future.

Romanoff somehow manages to spear a crouton with her fork. “Well, there's Rumlow, who's an asshole _without_ a tragic past, as far as I'm aware. Him and Rollins are pretty tight, they're you're typical dudebros, except a lot better with a gun, which may or may not be a good thing depending on how hard you think about it. Barton sometimes graces us with his presence, but that's when Barnes is actually doing grunt work instead of being on sniper duty, so he doesn't really train with the rest of us -”

“Hang on,” Steve interrupts, “Captain America is a _sniper_?”

Romanoff nods. “Best I've ever worked with, too. Don't tell Clint, his feelings would be hurt, but it's true.”

“But in the video I saw he used the shield, he _fought_ hand-to-hand -”

“He hates that shield.” She rolls her eyes again, this time fondly. “He says it doesn't work with his arm. Look, when I say he's the best sniper out there, I mean it. I've seen his shooting, up close and personal, and trust me, it's saved my ass on more than one occasion.”

Steve sighs. From what he knows of Romanoff, she doesn't hand out praise lightly, so if she says the new Cap is a good sniper he's probably one of the best in the world. But Steve can't help but feel personally attacked that the guy wearing his stars and stripes does so in the shadows of a sniper’s nest. 

Hell, he most likely doesn't even wear that uniform most of the time. He probably wears something stealthier, navy or black or another dark colour, with one hundred percent less striping. And he probably doesn't use the shield on most of his missions; the thing doesn't exactly scream ‘sniper’ after all, given the fact that it's basically a giant target conveniently strapped to the user’s back. So why'd Barnes get chosen to be the next Captain America if he wasn't going to do any of the things the Caps of the past all did?

Actually, that was a good question. Why _did_ he get chosen to be Captain America?

He asks that to Romanoff, who grins. “Officially, and you'd know this if you bothered to read his section of the binder, it was because he was nominated by Fury, and whoever the Director of SHIELD nominates usually ends up getting it. But unofficially, probably because he’s terrifyingly good at what he does.” 

“You mean, shooting people?”

“Sure. Among other things.” Romanoff tucks a stray curl behind her ear, showing the blue plastic hoop dangling from her earlobe. “He's good, Rogers, both at what he does, and just overall. He's not going to tarnish your legacy or anything, if that's what you're worried about.”

It hadn't been, but Steve doesn't really know what he really _had_ been so worked up about, so he lets the subject drop. “So, Rumlow,” he says, “why is he an asshole?”

Romanoff shudders dramatically, rustling the material of her crisp white windbreaker, and launches into a retelling of one of the (seemingly many) times Rumlow had tried to hit on her while chasing down a target (who, _shockingly_ , got away in the end). It's funny, the way she tells it, but Steve can't seem to stop thinking about the new Cap and the way he took down those aliens in that video. 

_Terrifyingly efficient,_ Romanoff had said. 

Yeah, that was certainly one way to put it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from sleepsong by bastille:  
> "Your dreams and memories are blurring into one/The scenes which hold the waking world slowly come undone"
> 
> welcome to this fic! updates will be coming but i can't promise a specific schedule as of rn  
> see you in the next chapter :) comments n kudos r always appreciated

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on twitter @barnesdanvers !!


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